A very large proportion, if not the greatest proportion, of fried chicken is coated by first dipping the parts in a thin mixture of water and egg or milk solids or both, allowing them to drain for a short period of time, less than one minute, then thoroughly coating the parts with flour. The flour may be hard or soft wheat, with or without seasonings added. This is the particular method for which this machine is designed.
There is a special problem associated with flour coating chicken parts, in that the cut edges of the skin have a tendency to fall free of the meat after dry coating, leaving an area unacceptably free of coating material. Hand coating with flour after dipping can produce a very acceptable product without this problem, but this process is inherently uncontrollable, due to variable drain time after dipping, variable time in the flour, and human variation when tumbling the parts in the flour. It is also messy, slow, and wasteful of flour due to excessive production of "dough balls", which must be discarded.
One machine method of coating which approaches the quality of hand coating, involves the use of a drum breader. Chicken parts and flour are introduced into one open end of a rotating drum which may have its axis tilted slightly down hill away from the entrance. Internal baffles or projections may be incorporated to assist in lifting and tumbling the parts in the flour, the action enabling loose skin flaps to open and become coated. An internal screw may be used to move the product axially. Excess flour is recovered at the open outlet end of the drum, while the coated parts are collected for cooking. The used flour is sifted to remove dough balls and is manually reloaded.
The prime objects to drum breaders in restaurant use are the irreducible minimum drum diameter required to process poultry parts, the irreducible minimum length necessary to process the volume required for the dwell time required, the difficulty of handling the large drum parts during clean-up, and the manual labor necessary to recycle the flour through the machine. Automatic flour recycling in drum breaders is costly and cumbersome. Other objections can be variation in performance as the initial flour load decreases with use, and the large volume of flour necessary as an initial charge for each batch. The batch type of processing in itself is not objectionable in restaurants, because the fryers are usually also of batch loading type. Important considerations in the design of a machine for chicken parts coating are therefore: The ability to coat the product as well as, or better than, by the hand method, consistency in coating, minimum load of coating materials, recirculation of dry coating material, continuous sifting of dry material to remove "dough balls", compact size, ease of assembly and disassembly without tools, and ease of sanitation.
An object of the present invention is to provide a food coating machine comprising a housing having parallel side walls and an imperforate pan for containing a fluidized pool of coating material extending between the side walls, the pan having a generally flat end supported in the housing in a generally horizontal position and the pan having its opposite end curved smoothly upwardly through an are tangent to said flat end and extending from the point of tangency until the radius of said arc has swept through an angle between about 45.degree. and 120.degree. beyond the point of tangency, together with an open mesh wire conveyor belt substantially the width of the pan with means guiding a working run of this belt close to the upper surface of the pan along the curved end, and means for driving this belt to carry the working run in a first direction from said flat end toward said curved end of said pan, so that a pool of fluidized coating material may be provided in the pan, food portions may be placed in the pool, and the conveyor belt may be driven in the direction to tumble the food portions in the pool of coating material to thoroughly coat the same.
Another object of the invention is to provide two of such food coating machines placed one above the other in a frame with the upper member being a wet coating unit having the general flat end of the pan supported in a slightly inclined manner sloping inwardly and downwardly toward the curved end of the pan and having its opposite end curved upwardly from a point of tangency with said flat end through an arc of about 110.degree. until the arc radius line is substantially horizontal with means for driving the conveyor belt in a tumbling direction, and thereafter driving the belt in the opposite direction to discharge the food product directly into the fluidized pool of coating material in the lower machine unit for dry coating the food product. The flat end of the pan in this dry coating unit may be horizontal, but, preferably it slopes inwardly and upwardly toward the curved end of the pan at an angle of about 15.degree. above the horizontal, and the curved end of the pan of this dry coating unit extends upwardly from a point of tangency with said flat end through about an additional 45.degree. until the arc radius line first reaches 30.degree. below horizontal while the conveyor belt of this unit continues to curve upwardly preferably until the belt is about upside down and horizontal again to be certain of dislodging any food product, such as chicken, where a loose end of skin might be caught in the open mesh wire conveyor belt.
Preferably, in the dry coating unit a coating material sifter is mounted in the housing directly below the distal curved end of the pan so that coating material discharged over the end of the pan will drop directly on the sifter.
Preferably also a drip pan is inserted in the frame below the wet coating unit and above the dry coating unit to catch any liquid drippings from the wet coating unit.
Other objects and advantages of the invention will be apparent from the accompanying drawings and description and the essential features thereof will be set forth in the appended claims.